Ghost is completely open source software built almost entirely by volunteer contributors who use it every day.
The best part about structuring a software project this way is that not only does everyone get to own the source code without restriction, but as people all over the world help to improve it: Everyone benefits.
Core team
In addition to full time product team working for Ghost Foundation, there are a number of community members who have contributed to the project for a lengthy period of time and are considered part of the core team. They are:
- Austin Burdine - Ghost-CLI
- Felix Rieseberg - Ghost Desktop
- Vicky Chijwani - Ghost Mobile
- David Balderston - Community
How core team members are added
People typically invited to join the Core Team officially after an extended period of successful contribution to Ghost and demonstrating good judgement. In particular, this means having humility, being open to feedback and changing their mind, knowing the limits of their abilities and being able to communicate all of these things such that it is noticed. Good judgement is what produces trust, not quality, quantity or pure technical skill.
When we believe a core contributor would make a great ambassador for Ghost and feel able to trust them to make good decisions about its future - that’s generally when we’ll ask them to become a member of the formal Core Team.
Core Team members are granted commit rights to Ghost projects, access to the Ghost Foundation private Slack, and occasionally join our international team retreats.
Community guidelines
All participation in the Ghost community is subject to our incredibly straightforward code of conduct and wider community guidelines.
The vast majority of the Ghost community is incredible, and we work hard to make sure it stays that way. We always welcome people who are friendly and participate constructively, but we outright ban anyone who is behaving in a poisonous manner.
Ghost Trademark
Ghost is a registered trademark of Ghost Foundation Ltd. We’re happy to extend a flexible usage license of the Ghost trademark to community projects, companies and individuals, however it please read the Ghost trademark usage policy before using the Ghost name in your project.
Development guide
If you’re a developer looking to help, but you’re not sure where to begin: Check out the good first issue label on GitHub, which contains small pieces of work that have been specifically flagged as being friendly to new contributors.
Or, if you’re looking for something a little more challenging to sink your teeth into, there’s a broader help wanted label encompassing issues which need some love.
When you’re ready, check out the full Ghost Contributing Guide for detailed instructions about how to hack on Ghost Core and send changes upstream.
Ghost is currently hiring Product Engineers! Check out what it’s like to be part of the team and see our open roles at careers.ghost.org
Other ways to help
The primary way to contribute to Ghost is by writing code, but if you’re not a developer there are still ways you can help. We always need help with:
- Helping our Ghost users on the forum
- Creating tutorials and guides
- Testing and quality assurance
- Hosting local events or meetups
- Promoting Ghost to others
There are lots of ways to make discovering and using Ghost a better experience.
Donations
As a non-profit organisation we’re always grateful to receive any and all donations to help our work, and allow us to employ more people to work on Ghost directly.
Partnerships
We’re very happy to partner with startups and companies who are able to provide Ghost with credit, goods and services which help us build free, open software for everyone. Please reach out to us hello@ghost.org if you’re interested in partnering with us to help Ghost.
Open Collective 
New: We have a number of ongoing donation and sponsorship opportunities for individuals or companies looking to make ongoing contributions to the open source software which they use on Open Collective.
Bitcoin
For those who prefer to make a one time donation, we’re very happy to accept BTC. Unless you explicitly want your donation to be anonymous, please send us a tweet or an email and let us know who you are! We’d love to say thank you.
Ghost BTC Address:3CrQfpWaZPFfD4kAT7kh6avbW7bGBHiBq9
